Heeeeeerrrrrs Johnny

*peers through hole in door made by axe”

Ok, nothing quite so dramatic or scary, but in other words – I’m back

I’ve been a tad (understatement of the century – I worked 7 1/2 days, 18-20 hours a day) busy with work and haven’t managed to get to anything bloggy or flickry, only managing some tweets on my way to and from work-related places.

Well now I’m back on the case.  My job does this sometimes, its quiet for ages and then all of a sudden, there’s a proof of concept to scope out or a proposal to write and its no sleep for a week.

Ah well, at Kurt Vonnegut always said – “and so it goes”

So, I have sooooo much to write about – well, I *had* things to write about, they’ve gone now, fresh out of my head!

I posted off a load of films today, so I should get them back in a week or so – I keep on saying this but somehow never manage – I MUST TAKE MORE SHOTS WITH FILM!  There, do you think that’ll help?

Speaking of film, and one of my things I was going to write about that I can actually remember – I’m going to tell you all a secret.

The Lomo Diana Mini that I coveted so much and wanted for ages…well, it sucks, or as a friend of mine used to say – it blows goats.  I can’t get to grips with it at all, the focus is annoying – no, impossible (I’ll come back to this) the shutter is so stiff the camera jumps when I click it, the counter doesnt work properly, it rips the film on the rewind and the film is now stuck on the advance.

so, screw you, Diana Mini!  (of course, if the one film I did put through it comes back with brilliant shots I may change my opinion, but only if someone tells me how to get the damn film to advance!)

I did wonder if it was user error (although its a simple 35mm film camera – they’re not exactly hard to use) but no, I dont think it is.  Its just badly built.

The worst thing about it I discovered a few minutes after getting it out of the box is the focus is impossible for anyone other than Japanese girls or children to use.  I shall attempt to take some shots with the iPhone right now to show you

As you can see, the focus bit is actually the black inner lens – it rotates like you’d expect and there are convenient markings at the bottom and a handy little plastic pointer thingy so you know what its set to.

But herein lies the rub.  Its teeny.  I don’t have big fingers, far from it, I have pretty small hands, but then I’m only 5ft7, I’d look like a gorilla with big trucker hands.  Anyway, back to the point – as you can see below – I can’t really get my fingers between the outer lens cover and the focus ring to turn it.

Its also really stiff, so often, not only can I hardly reach it, it wont fookin’ turn!

So, Diana Mini – you really suck!!

Don’t buy one, get a Holga – they rock*  or a Superheadz Golden Half if you want 1/2 frame 35mm.  I’m going order my GF on ebay this very week!

*although the foam inside the spool cavity in mine has come off and is now wrapped up neatly in one of the films I’ve sent off to the lab.

Next blog post – iPhone goodness, east meets west and when I went to meet the Lord.

But now, please excuse me, its wine o’clock.

be right back..

I’m flat out busy trying to complete a rather large proposal at the moment – this has meant working every waking hour all week and now all weekend.

Sucks to be me, huh?

It’s due Monday 11:30am Perth time, so if its not totally done by Sunday night (24 hours to go) then we’re in for an all nighter too.  Not done one of those in a while.

I’m going to see Lord Christopher Monckton, Global Warming sceptic extraordinaire, on Monday night – after that, I’ll be back in form with:

1.  Lomo Diana Mini, you blow goats
2.  Red wine and spreadsheets, you know it makes sense
3.  Saddle chairs, why they aren’t all that for a bloke
4.  Simple Minds, where are you know?

and, finally,  Florence and the Machine, I think I’m in fan-love.

Stay tuned.

As Jerry Springer would say..

Take care of yourself, and each other

we’re all going on a summer holiday

Well, when I say we, I mean Jay and I.

Due to the cost cost of the wedding and flights to have my kids over for Christmas, we didn’t have enough funds or time off to take a honeymoon straight after we got married.  So, after some deliberation and an evening checking out hotels and stuff, we’ve finally booked the trip

- a long weekend in Melbourne

I’m excited – it’ll be the first place outside the general Perth area I’ve been in Australia.

Melbourne is supposed to be pretty cool and I can’t wait to go now

So, if anyone that reads this blog hails from Melbourne – please give me some tips and suggestions for the not traditional tourist “must visits”

When I say not traditional – I don’t care about shopping or endless beaches (we have them over this side of the country too) – I care about the things that really make Melbourne and Victoria what it is.  We won’t have a car, so no expeditions to remote places – city limits or train journey only

And now, with the dulcet tones of Sir Cliff in my head, I’m off to dream of driving through Europe in a London Bus work

a day out

We went to Caversham Wildlife Park today.  I love it when I see place names from England here, especially places I know – its even funnier when 2 places are next to each other here when they’re not in England.

Caversham is near Reading, south west of London and a place I know quite well.  Caversham here is semi rural place where vineyards flourish, watered by the Swan River.

Anyway, I digress.

Its an hour or so’s drive, just past the place where we went to see the B52’s and the Proclaimers a month or so back.  Its within a massive national park and is kinda tucked away and not very busy at all.

It was pretty warm today, especially inland where this place is – despite a good strong breeze it was 37 degrees – and we were out in the middle of the day.  *phew*

The wildlife park was awesome, so many cool animals with lots of space to roam about – some of the animals were a little couped up, but most had acres of space – the birds especially.

The highlights (orgive me for all the photos, but these creatures were soooo adorable!)

a kangaroo enclosure where you could stroke and feed them.  They were all born in the park so were used to and liked human contact, so getting up close was not a problem, unlike in the wild where they can be dangerous up close

a koala enclosure where you could get up close to the little sleeping cuddly bears and even stroke them.  They were so adorable sleeping in all kinds of positions.

and my favourite – check out the guy on the left!

goats.  goats are wicked – they love a good scratch behind the ears and really don’t want you to stop, even to the point of butting up against you to do some more, but being content to eat your bag or shorts if they can’t get more attention.  I like goats, but they’d eat the sofa and the tv and the patio before a week was out.

sugar gliders – teeny little things laying on their backs fast asleep.  Like little kittens almost, paws in the air, claws outstretched.  Adorable

There were also hundreds of guinea pigs, furry bantams, pregnant sheep, a couple of camels, some wombats, wallabies, quokkas, Tasmanian devils, a bloody great golden orb weaver spider a giganormous pig and a donkey called Tommy that did tricks for food

We had a lovely picnic lunch, an ice cream and then wandered back home again.

Awesome day out!

value-add

This is a photography related rant.

There’s a lot of moaning on the internet about how these days, photographers are devalued and no-one is prepared to pay for good work any more.

I think thats utter bollocks.

The reality is that everyone and his mother has a camera capable of capturing a quality image suitable for online content.  The web and sites like flickr have made it possible for people to upload and share these photos in their countless millions – so the benchmark for average photography has been raised.

Its easy for a company to purchase or even yoink (aka steal) an image for its own uses without anyone really caring.  Indeed, the latest trick is to flatter the photographer with the magic word

“Exposure”

Give me the image for free and millions will see it and give you exposure.

Yeah, whatever..

Thats the bit serious photographers are complaining about.  They have a point, it kinda sucks that companies can get cheap stock or free amateur pictures and no longer pay advertising type rates, but go back to the earlier point – the countless millions of users that hang out on the internet with cameras have changed the market forever.

Get used to it.

There’s still a viable market for photography, you just have to go after it and make yourself deserve the money.  Be creative, be different, be cutting edge and offer things that no-one else, especially the millions of average photographers, can.

Thats the real rub – the whingers just aren’t differentiating themselves enough to make decent money.  The photographers that are cutting edge and offering something that little bit different are doing just fine I think.  Certainly Chase Jarvis – a Seattle based photographer is doing ok – his stuff is cool.  It can’t be done by just anyone.  And Rankin in London – same deal.

Its the same with wedding photography, just because you can get it cheap doesn’t mean it’ll be any good. I’ve been horrified by simply terrible wedding photography recently – hopefully the couples concerned didn’t pay much, cos they didn’t get much.

The really good wedding photographers might charge a premium but its because they are offering things the others simply cant.  Average wedding photography is going the same way as stock photos – if that’s the product you’re selling, it’ll quickly be worth $0 – anyone can buy a DSLR and point and shoot with it.  And once everyone is doing it, its not worth anything.

Take blogging – the early adopters made a fortune out of it, but as soon as it became easy for people like me to say my tuppenth, then who would pay for that?

The premium product is the same as it always has been – photographers, writers, bloggers, musicians etc that offer something unique will succeed, no matter how much the low end of the market is charging.

ikky

Its damn hot again today, not the best for walking 20 mins in a suit

Of course, a year ago, it wasn’t like this in the mornings..it was a lot cooler..

I’ve written about this before, but I think its timely to remind you all..

So a big thank-you to all the morons who voted for daylight savings time to end permanently in Perth.  You bunch of geniuses really didn’t think it through at all, letting your blinkered opinions of how you think things are get in the way of some good solid facts about how and more importantly, when it gets hot in the summer.

The argument for the ending of daylight savings went something like this

1. Its too hot in the summer and we want the sun to go down quicker to give us rest from the heat
2. The poor little children are coming home in the hottest part of the day, spare them the misery..
3. If we shift the time, we can use the super cool mornings to do all things like exercise we couldn’t do after work as it was too hot
4. The cows get confused (no, really, this was one of the main arguments..) and the milk spoils..
5. Perth doesn’t need it, change bad

Well, geniuses, heres the rub.

1. The sun has been up for hours before most of us go to work and the mornings are now quite a good bit hotter now than they were.  The heat climbs pretty quickly once the day is going and levels off around 12ish.  So thanks for making my mornings 5-10 degrees warmer.
2. The poor little children now have to *go* to school in the heat as well as come back in it – well done for that.  As I just pointed out, the heat builds quickly, so what was cooler 8am, is now pretty warm.  The heat levels off and cools gently to the evening – the difference in the afternoon between 3 and 4 is pretty negligible.  Again, really nicely thought out, daylight savings haters.  You only have to look at a thermometer to know how the temperature profiles during the day.
3. I’m not seeing a lot of people up at 4:30am jogging and stuff.  So we now have a load of wasted cool daylight until the autumn comes and brings us 6am sunrises again.  Oh, that was another thing, the “dark” mornings in the autumn before the clocks went back for winter were “deadly” apparently, causing accidents and rapes and murders.  Well, once again, idiots, the sunrise being 7am for those last few weeks of DLS  is replicated a month later and throughout the whole winter without DSL, only then its raining too.  Are there more accidents and general anarchy?  No.  Way to go, morons
4. Dont even get me started..
5. This sums it up.  The fact that the rest of the world seems to prosper with DLS, and is, on balance, a better use of cooler mornings, better use of evening light for those who actually have to work and commute and generally more conducive to an outdoor lifestyle is totally lost on the people of Perth.   They didn’t have DLS when they were kids, so why do they need it now.

Its all really a moot frigging point as its not overly hot for more than a handful of days a year anyway.  Its easy to focus on the stinking hot days and forget the other 360 days that are just fine, thank you very much.

So, as I was saying before the ranting started, it is hot today and my back is sweaty.  Nice, huh?

Better do some work, I suppose..

creepy crawlies

We’re well renowned for our deadly animals down here in UpsideDown Land.

You name any number of ways to get bitten, pronged, chomped, eaten, zapped, stung and poisoned, we’ve got something, usually pretty small and easily missed, that can do you in without breaking sweat.

As some of you might recall, I got bitten by a whitetail spider when I first arrived here and wasn’t that pleased by the effects (nausea, vertigo, general falling over and a big black bite site on my hand that lasted about 3 weeks).  Handily, they’re wandering spiders, seeking out other spiders to nosh on.  Which means they often wander around the house, relatively unseen.

I found one in the study yesterday.  meh.

The other joyful spider we have here is the famous redback.

I’ve seen lots of these little wonders about the place and I’m not to bothered by them, as nasty and toxic as they are, they’re very timid and tend hide out of the way – only coming out at night really.

We get them in the garage a lot and I always keep an eye out for their tell tale messy webs and long strands at 45 degrees anchored to the ground.

The other week I almost walked into one as I was putting the bins out – it had strung itself from the wall to the car at knee height and was happily waiting for its prey or a blundering me to chow down on.   So I’ve been a bit more careful at night now, keeping a good watch out as I really don’t want to get bitten.

And tonight, they’re back.  With their friends too.

Ten of the bit fat black and red striped mummas, all in easily stumbled into places at the front of the house and at ankle height, sitting on their trip wire web strands well out into the garage.  meh!!

So, a can of spray later, they’re all gone.  Well, the ones that I could see.

Trouble is, now all I can feel is things crawling up my leg..

Monday Monday

So good to me…

Just like the Mamas and the Papas, my Monday ended up being awesome.

Work was boring, nothing happened at all all day, as this year, Monday is an odd day between the weekend and the public holiday for Australia Day (today).  As a consequence, I was done early and “helped” Jay make pizzas for dinner and we went out to take sunset photos at Point Peron

We’d had a hot day, compounded by the aircon having given up the ghost and deciding that it was only going to blow hot air from now on (*sigh*) so it was lovely to get out to the beach.

Was a gorgeous evening, the girls had lots of fun, we saw a big brown seal lazing on a rock and lots of crabs in the rockpools

What more can I say other than to show you photos..

And to top that, if it were even possible, I went and got some wine.

Mondays, not always bad.

down south, part 3

3rd verse, same as the first.

Or so sang the Violent Femmes (one of my all time favourite bands of all time)

anyways, its a fib, this isn’t the same as part one at all (except that we took the same roads home)

The drive back was unremarkable except for the fact that the sun was going down and we were treated to an amazing sunset.  If Jay hadn’t been suffering with her back and keen to get home I would have headed for the beach and set up the camera.  As it was, I made do with my shotgun position to capture a few of the moments on the way back.

Then, I decided to do some long exposure shots with the camera on the dash – was really funny to see the crazy shots that came out

So there you go – that was the day trip to Dunsborough.

down south, part 2

Continuing from part 1, we had a quick drink in the very posh cafe at Bunker Bay and then went round the corner to Eagle Bay, which is a very small little neighbourhood full of lovely expensive summer houses, Range Rovers, a brand new Porsche Panamera and million dollar for sale hoardings.

Eagle Bay itsself was beautiful with a white sand and even bluer sea than in Warnbro where I live or Bunker Bay that we’d just come from.

Am so going there again, it was quiet and unspoiled, even on a weekend in the height of summer with Australia day just 3 days away.   There were lots of other little bays and places that would be worth exploring later in the day when the light was golden – particularly on the other side of the peninsular – Canal Rocks and Sugarloaf Rock being two very popular places for photographers.   Save those for another time when we have somewhere to stay for the night

We mooched back to Dunsborough for some coffee, but even at 4:30pm on a busy Saturday, most places had already shut or were shutting.  WTF, Australia? I see this so much and I really don’t get it.  After a day on the beach or out exploring, who wouldn’t want to come back for a snack/coffee/cake/etc before dinner later.  Apparently that message was only heeded by The Dome, so we headed there for a drink before we went home.

We drove through Busselton, which quite frankly was nothing much at all – the highlight is the huge mile long jetty, but that closed last year, leaving a fenced off eyesore and basically sod-all else.  Some naked girls/young women skinny dipping and wrestling in the sand was pretty much the highlight (much to the delight of some passing teenage boys who were busy picking their jaws up off the floor..).  Even the beachside water park/theme park thing was closed and neglected.. Took a few piccies with the Holga Pinhole Wide angle camera, forgot to take the damn lens cap off though – meh!  thats 2 shots out of 12 that will be black..  *sob*

By this time Jay was feeling tired having done all the driving (she always wants to drive, so I get to be shotgun with the cameras) and wanted to go home and as she was driving and we had a long way to go, we headed off..

And that bit will be in part 3..